


Scheherazade

by Northisnotup



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Bonding, Childhood Friends, Friendship, Gen, Post What Lies Beyond pt. 2, Post-Episode: s03e22 What Lies Beyond, Reminiscing, no betas we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-08
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-14 12:34:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29916975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Northisnotup/pseuds/Northisnotup
Summary: “I made Annie cry once, did I ever tell you?”
Relationships: Juno Steel & Sasha Wire
Comments: 6
Kudos: 32





	Scheherazade

**Author's Note:**

> This is completely inspired by a scene from The Thief Returns, the last book in The Queen's Thief series and by a line said in the s2 finale of Limetown. 
> 
> I have...so many thoughts about these dumb kids growing up together.

“I made Annie cry once, did I ever tell you?” 

Sasha wished that she didn’t react, when Juno said her sister’s name. She wished she could remain impassive and cold. As frigid and remote as the Martin desert at night. She was a prisoner here and she intended to act like one. 

But, despite herself, Juno said her name and she found herself turning. She’d given herself away, and by the crooked smile tucked into the side of his mouth he knew it. Seeing as there was no point in pretending anymore, she said: “No, you never did.” 

“I think I was trying to have a smoke under the bleachers,” he started, and she interrupted. 

“You never smoked.” 

“For one whole week in 7th grade, I did.” He shot back. “Anyway, the point is, someone throws something at me, this shitty paper airplane, and I look up, and Ben, Mick and Annie are all hanging out of a second floor window.”

Sasha allowed herself a wrinkle between her brows as she considered. Went over those memories she hadn’t thought about in so long they were covered in a thin layer of dust. “Was that the week I don’t remember?” 

He snorted. “Sasha Wire never gets sick.”

With a grave tilt of her head, she conceded the point. She never did get sick. Wouldn’t allow herself to, more like. Until she spent two days going through the motions with a fever so high her brain nearly boiled inside her skull. Her mother had made her stay home the rest of the week, and she had agreed to that with the stipulation that Juno bring her back her homework everyday. Which Juno had agreed to do if her fathers would let him take home some of the leftovers they had at the end of the day. 

They would have given them to him for the asking, but Juno had never asked. 

Still.

“Ben didn’t like Mick,” Sasha tried not to sound accusing, like she was poking his story for holes. She knew she failed when Juno scoffed at her. 

“Nope,” he smacked his lips. “but he liked Annie.” 

She nodded again, expecting him to gloss over his brother now that he’d forgiven her for mentioning Benzaiten at all. Perhaps he allowed it as payment for bringing up Annie in the first place. 

“Whenever we’d pass the cart, Benten tried to barter with your dads,” Juno said. 

Sasha was too surprised to stop herself. “For what?” 

“He wanted to trade me for Annie. He thought it’d be neat to have a little sister… When you’re a twin, you get the same jokes, all the time. Who’s older, are you the good twin or the bad twin, can you read each other’s mind? God, he hated them.”

“He loved you,” Sasha said, just as factual. She wasn’t sure when this became a conversation, but like a sand trap, one never knew it was there until a step too late. She was still expecting the open softness on his face to snap closed, maybe taking a chunk of her with it. 

Sasha was very, painfully aware, it’s not an openness she’s ever seen with him sober.

Juno nodded. “I know. I used to think he liked the routine of the joke, because we passed the cart every day on the way to school.”

“And now?” 

He didn’t answer, and Sasha attempted unsuccessfully to be content with that. 

“So Mick, being Mick, calls out to get my attention, I guess he thought the airplane wasn’t enough, but I knew if he started kicking up a fuss I’d get caught. So I wave him off, and he waves back,”

“Charades?” Sasha guessed. Mick loved charades. He was terrible at it, but that never softened his appreciation for the game. 

“Then Benten gets that look, and he opens his big mouth,”

“Oh, no,” she almost laughs. 

“Yeah. So, I fix my tights and I hike up my skirt and I take a running leap up that wall and grab him around the neck trying to yank him back out the window with me.” 

She couldn't help it, and interrupted him to hiss: “I knew it. I knew you were the reason they put bars on the second floor window.” 

“Prove it,” he snarked, “He grabs the windowsill, and Mick grabs him, and that’s when he looks at me like I’m gonna pay for this ‘cause you know how Benten felt about being touched outside of dance,”

Sasha did. In a word: badly.

“And I’ve got my boots on the wall, pulling Benten with everything I’ve got, he’s pushing back, Mick’s trying to pull us both. I’m yelling, calling Benten every name in the book, Mick is laughing, and Ben is shrieking at me, I think something about his clothes and somehow over that we all hear something, and when we look, and there’s Annie, about 7, maybe 10 feet from us, in the corner of the room with tears streaming down her face.” 

Annie never liked it when other people fought. She was stubborn about getting her own way, but she hated it when anyone else would yell or be cruel. Considering that was most of what Sasha and Juno’s friendship was based on, Sasha thought that, for Annie, her stubbornness must have outweighed her softness. 

“You froze.”

“We freeze. Like jackalopes in the headlights. The only thing keeping us up was the shock. Then, Mick. Lets. Go.”

Sasha sighed. 

“I guess he thought making Annie stop crying was more important that keeping me from, you know, falling to my death.”

“It was one storey,” Sasha chided automatically. 

“Who’s side are you on?”

“Annie’s.”

“Fair enough. Well, Mick wasn’t exactly her knight in shining armor there, ‘cause when he let go, Benten didn’t have any support and we lurched. And Annie screams, and Mick screams and then we all realize that… we’re in deep shit if we don’t get me through this window.”

Oldtown Elementary was not a big campus. There was no chance of being somewhere where a scream wouldn’t be heard. It was designed that way on purpose. 

“What did you do?” 

“Benten and I would sneak out all the time, but one at a time, so that I could help him in or out and, he could do the same for me. I only grabbed him like that because I knew that he’d catch me.”

“This couldn’t be before he made you afraid of heights,” Sasha said skeptically. 

“No, that was when we were seven,” Juno agreed cheerfully and Sasha snorted. 

When they were seven, as punishment for some slight Sasha never knew the full details of, Juno had given Benzaiten a fear of the dark that, to her knowledge, never went away. Six months later, to pay him back in kind, Benten gave him a lifelong fear of heights. 

“But one storey up is kind of nothing at all like that, and we’re not talking about that because you swore on _your mother’s name_ to never bring it up again.” 

“She changed it,” Sasha shrugged. 

“Mazel,” Juno shot back flatly. 

“So how hurt did you get?” 

“I skinned both knees, ruining my tights, and Benten bruised his tailbone. But we got me in just as Mx. Genidies found us.”

Sasha’s brows rose. “You’re lucky it was him and not,”

“Ms. Irene,” they said, and Juno affected a shudder. 

Sasha didn’t want to forgive him for this. For taking her hostage, for being soft with her, for offering her stories of her sister. But there was still some part of her that thought of him as hers. The very first day they met she took him home with her and presented him to her parents as though he was a stray kitten she had found and wanted to keep. Juno had been her age and she so desperately wanted a companion other than her sister. She remembered the tantrum she threw when her papa had sent him home at dinner time and still felt the faintest flush of embarrassment at the memory. 

She was so far removed from that girl. 

Juno, she knew, would have a book of things to say to his younger self. She thought some of it might even be kind. Understanding. 

Sasha didn’t know what she would say to the girl she was. Would she ask for forgiveness? What for? 

“Tell me another story?” 

Juno flicked a look of surprise at her. 

She didn’t know what he saw in his face, and didn’t ask. 

“You know all the rest,” he said instead, eye falling away. 

She shrugged. “So tell me something new.”

He was always a good storyteller, when the mood struck. She didn’t know why she’d never told him that. Maybe she would. 

Later.


End file.
